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East Timor yearns for real independence 15 years after the UN referendum

Shannon Gillies

A hopeful start: 63-year-old refugee Ana Mariana Do Rego gives her ecsatatic reaction to the result of East Timor's referendum in 1999. Photo: Jason South

Dili: After decades of Indonesian occupation, East Timor is touted as a success story for the United Nations.

But 15 years after more than 80 per cent of the population voted for independence in a referendum on August 30, 1999, and the country's first free parliamentary elections on the same day two years later, East Timor's former president Jose Ramos-Horta warns that there are no short cuts to peace, to nation-building and state-building.

"No one should have illusions that we can consolidate peace, transform lives from violence and extreme poverty into long-lasting peace, peace as a culture, as a way of life, and free from the shackles of poverty in a single generation," Dr Ramos-Horta says.

Manuel Monteiro Fernandes, executive director of human rights group the HAK Association, says that in the early days of independence the World Bank, the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank tried to implement an economic culture that had a devastating effect on the developing nation. Programs were introduced where workers were told if they produced items such as food or took part in road-building that they would get paid.

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"It made society become quite dependent," he says. "Without money people don't want to do work."

Differences over economic policy led to the downfall of the country's first prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, in the 2007 elections, he says. The development policy jarred with government thinking at the time and they were rolled.

Patients at the Bairo Pite Clinic in Dili. Photo: Shannon Gillies

"The problem at the time was the World Bank was very strong and it also had the support of the church, so together they were working together to bring down the leadership of Fretilin in 2002 to 2004. Then Mari Alkatiri, [elected] the first prime minister of Timor in 2002, [was] forced to resign in 2006." Since Alkatiri's resignation Timor has become more resource-dependent on other nations, he says.

Dan Murphy, a doctor at the Bairo Pite Clinic in Dili, which provides free healthcare to East Timorese, says the one positive thing the UN achieved in its time in the country was getting the Indonesians out.

"East Timorese don't really have much of a role in their own economy," Dr Murphy says. "What's really interesting is how the Chinese are moving in. That's competing with the East Timorese people, but the East Timorese don't have [China's] back-ups.

"The country's still new. If it can change, it can still do things. It can become the place we dream about."

Charlie Scheiner, a spokesman for the East Timor Institute for Reconstruction Monitoring and Analysis, also known as La'o Hamutuk, says there are a number of elements affecting the country's rebuilding. Many East Timorese have post-traumatic stress disorder and have never lived in a country where rule of law applied, he says, pointing out that no one has ever really answered for the war crimes committed during the Indonesian occupation.

"People here think 'Why should I follow the law? Why shouldn't I beat my wife? Why should I ride my bicycle on the right side of the road?' It's not an easy thing." It takes a range of skills to be able to build resistance and overthrow an occupation, but it takes a different skills base to govern, Mr Scheiner says.

East Timor independence leader Xanana Gusmao votes in the country's first democratic elections on August 30, 2001. Photo: Reuters

"If you're building a guerrilla movement, you don't hold public consultations. You make decisions on the spot. That's not the way things are supposed to work in a peacetime constitutional democracy. So hopefully the leaders here won't hold on to power as long as Zimbabwe's [Robert] Mugabe. Timor Leste's in that phase of its history. It's not anybody's fault. It's just the way things are."

The HAK Association's advocacy co-ordinator, Sisto dos Santos, says the 2012 UN withdrawal has made no difference in people's day-to-day lives. "We have a flag, we have a president, we have a parliament, but how [do we] make people feel they've got a different life? Timor Leste people know they have their own institutions, but they don't have ownership. [They] have independence, but they're not independently governing for themselves."

Dr Ramos-Horta talks of the role aid played in East Timor's rebuilding. Australia was a friend in that endeavour, he says, but its aid was not always well directed.

Former prime minister Mari Alkatiri, flanked by Australian soldiers in July 2006. Photo: AP

"Australia could have done much, much more in setting up vocational schools, like TAFE [colleges], around the country. Australia could have provided far more scholarships for higher education in Australia, particularly in [the] Northern Territory. It could have established high-quality English language training centres around the country," Dr Ramos-Horta says.

The aid that did arrive was almost entirely in the hands of aid donors such as Australia and Japan, and it was they who decided on priorities and implementation when people and agencies operating on the ground should have had more input, he says.

"Of course, there have been changes and improvement, with aid now better allocated and implemented," Dr Ramos-Horta says.